“History is the presentation as inevitable of something that in its own time was so questionable.”  So wrote the novelist Philip Roth, or words to that effect.   A generation or two from now, the bad movies produced by Eritrean artists now will appear as inevitably so even when those of us who are in the present are still arguing, “they need not be so bad.”

They really need not be so.  Previously, this writer alerted you to the unintentionally funny movie “Should I Divorce You Just To Re-Marry You?” -- I still smile at the mere mention of that movie, whose review you can read here: http://www.awate.com/artman/publish/article_4539.shtml

But at least that movie had campy qualities to it—where you can at least derive guilty pleasure from laughing at scenes you are not supposed to laugh.  Now comes “Qetali SiHbet.”

That’s the first pause…what the hell does that phrase, “Qetali SiHbet,” mean?  Isn’t the adjective-noun formulation a bit strange?  Not something that is frequently used in Tigrigna.  I have a rule: when you are in doubt, always translate Tigrigna words to English and….sure enough, it works. What we have here is “Fatal Attraction.”  

Just coincidentally (wink, wink), there was a movie with just such a name starring Michael Douglas and Glenn Close.  It was the standard morality tale about the woes of infidelity but the movie added a new vocabulary to the pop culture lexicon—bunny boiler—which describes the Glenn Close character.  Bunny Boiler now means an obsessive person who is so incapable of taking no for an answer that the stalking goes to the degree of killing a rabbit in a pot.  Look it up at wikipedia, such a phrase exists.

So, if Qetali SiHbet is Fatal Attraction, should we be expecting an Eritrean re-make of the Douglas-Close movie?  Who will be the femme fatale?  What is going to be boiled, perhaps a toad?  How will they re-make the bathtub killing scene, in a city without bathtubs? Pull up the curtains, get your Embaba America and…

1.  The credits.  Ok, good, Amir Grafics (not graphics, but grafics.)  I think this is the same talented artist who draws creative political (mostly Somali-centric) cartoons.  But I could be wrong.   I am noticing that Asmawood (Asmara Hollywood), borrowing from the original, uses the standard centrifugal crediting system, you know:

XYZ Presents:
An ABC Production:
A Film By DEF:

A Spike Lee Joint  

2.  Cinematography:  No complaints at all.  I think Eritrean photographers, videographers are still looking for writers that can match their quality.  This is fast becoming a highly developed art form.

3.  Casting:   Morality tales like this are entirely driven by the beauty, sex appeal, charisma of the femme fatale.  Here’s a good man, minding his own business, a good and moral man, but what could he do when he was tempted by such a magnet?  That’s what you would normally ask.  But not in this movie.  The designated temptress here has neither personality, nor good looks. We are told that she has defrauded many, many men…the question is: with what? She has the star power of two toothpicks and the magnetism of cotton swaps.  Which begs the question: how hard could it have been for the man in the story to say, “no thanks!”

4.  Acting:  I know we are a poor country and we can’t afford even one university.  But somewhere along the dozens of vocational colleges that are in existence or in the drawing board, we have to make room for an acting school.  

5. Story writing:  Most writers says writing comedy is harder than writing drama.  What is paradoxical is that, in Eritrea, comedy is now highly developed and drama has not graduated from the Land of Soap Opera.  The lines are heavy—notice I didn't say "deep"--they don’t sound real.  Nobody talks like they do. The plots vary from the unbelievable to the “nigga, please!”  Kids talking like adults is what is called dramatic license; but adults talking like cardboards should not be forgiven. In the unbelievable department in this movie, is the chemistry (non-existent) between the temptress and the seduced.  In the “Oh, Please!” section, we find the implausible “now-we are strangers, now-we-are-lovers” transition, which takes about 10 seconds.    In "Fetihe Do KmrAweki...", there is line where Mogadishu is used as a metaphor for chaos.  In this movie, a temporary boyfriend is described as transitional government--"mesegageri mengisti..."  One gets a sense that were it not for the prevailing censorship, the writers could do better, and come up with more original phrases.  But, maybe not.

6.  Sound track: Dear God.  I half-expected Barbara Streisand, Celine Dion and Diana Ross to jump out from the screen singing “memories,” “endless love” and the other sappy love songs they kept playing.  Is there a ship sinking somewhere, I hear the Titanic song. Come on, can’t we take a sabbatical from those loud pop instrumentals?  

7.  Directing:  Nobody deserves that many close-ups. Skin, pores.  Really, the trend is for the cameraman to pull back, especially in the age of high definition.    And, really, in the mandatory night club scene (every Eritrean movie has one), dances may advance the plot line, or be eye candy if you show us about 15-30 seconds of it.  But when you show us 5 minutes of dancing*, then you are just using a filler because you don’t have enough story.  Or, you are auditioning for an Indian movie.  *Based on the shockingly bad choreography of the dances in the two movies, I am leaning towards the idea that perhaps we should also have a dance school next to the acting schol.

But, on the plus side Asmara still looks beautiful…even if it is the tragic beauty of a depopulated museum.   Eritreans are fast becoming like modern Egyptians--quick with the transient humor but producing no art of lasting substance, because survival requires avoiding truth.  And art, at its base, is eternal Truth.  A talented Eritrean artist could create Dostoeviskian truth in Eritrea from a subject as simple as "why is Asmara simultaneously beautiful and empty, like a hollowed out tree?" And if not a book, at least a movie more compelling than Fatal Attraction.   But that movie won’t be made in this generation--how could you make the movie, much less write the book, when the Bunny Boilers are in charge?

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